With all the changes that have taken place, both globally and here, at Modern Painters, I felt it was important that for this, my first issue, I restate our mission and the significance of our name. I know some think our moniker a misnomer, but I find it the perfect descriptor. It is, of course, a reference to John Ruskin’s influential series of books, which championed artists who were experimenting with new ways of seeing and advancing fresh ideas about art and its relationship to nature, history, and society as a whole. It is in that spirit that Modern Painters today covers all areas of contemporary art, including installation art, photography, new media, film, design, architecture, theater, dance, music, and even science, in regard to how it informs and influences art-thinking and artmaking.

Given that focus, it is appropriate that John Waters is the subject of our September issue’s cover story, written by longtime Waters fan Lawrence Levi. Described more than a few times as brazen, garish, brutally honest, and "the godfather of sicko cinema," the provocative Baltimorean has successfully (and gleefully) traversed and transgressed the boundaries of film, theater, contemporary art, and popular culture, most recently last spring and summer in his concurrent shows at Marianne Boesky Gallery, in New York, and Gagosian Beverly Hills. Waters told me that Modern Painters is his favorite art magazine, and I imagine it’s because he too revels in bringing together disparate communities. His small — and, mind you, very tasteful — New York apartment is like a wild garden of diverse artistic visions and styles; in fact, I had to be careful not to trip over artworks by Carl André, Rob Pruitt, George Stoll, and Mike Kelley, among others. Every surface was stacked with art books (tomes on Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Richard Tuttle were a few that caught my eye) and CDs (by Tom Waits, Harry Connick Jr., Bach, Puccini, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Making my way through Waters’s paraphernalia and listening to his anecdotes throughout the photo shoot, I recalled a conversation I had had with the curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist in which he effervesced about Cedric Price’s 1960s interdisciplinary arts center, Fun Palace. Waters’s home — a contemporary cabinet of curiosities — was like a micro Fun Palace.

Waters’s commitment to, even obsession with, artmaking became apparent when he insisted on snapping a group Polaroid of our team, including me, photographer Poppy de Villeneuve, and MP’s photo editor, Alex Arnold. It turns out that one of Waters’s long-standing rituals is to take a picture of every visitor to his apartment, whether a repairman, a friend, or a group of people primping him for a shoot. So just as John Waters became a Modern Painters story, Modern Painters became a John Waters work in progress.

This kind of interaction and cross-pollination among diverse creative fields and individuals has made the contemporary-art world the vibrant community it is today. It’s one we wish to support in our own small, community-minded way by reintroducing a page devoted to readers’ letters in Modern Painters. So send your thoughts, your questions, your reactions — even your Polaroids — to modernpaintersmag@artinfo.com. We’d love to hear from you.

"Editor's Letter" originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' September 2009 Table of Contents.